


cathedrals of our own

by emullz



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 13:17:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10640625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emullz/pseuds/emullz
Summary: Octavia’s smile would have been infectious if Clarke hadn’t become exhausted from disease months ago. As it was, she felt like the layer of emotional detachment she’d draped over herself when the first bullet left her gun lift a little bit. Oh, her heart seemed to say. These are the kind of people you could love.And then, her mind: these are the kinds of people that could get you killed.(or just another bellarke zombie au)





	

**Author's Note:**

> the title is a quote from summer, highland falls by billy joel bc i am unoriginal!!! 
> 
> anyways i hope u have a good time reading this, it was a wild ride to write.

It had been weeks since Clarke had seen another person, another chest rising and falling with breath. It was hard to imagine watching someone walk towards her and not aiming for their forehead with a finger pressed to the trigger, and it was even harder to sleep without feeling hands claw their way up and down her legs. She huddled onto the floor of her car, covered in her jacket and a layer of indifference. 

 

If she died, what world was she leaving behind? 

 

“There’s nothing left for me here,” she whispered into the stale air above her face. “Nothing left.” 

 

And that was true, until it wasn’t.

 

He found her in a convenience store as she poked through the shelves, a cloth over her mouth to hide from the smell of milk that had long since gone bad. The blood that stained streaks of her hair red had his gun pointed at her direction within seconds. “O,” he called out. “Go back to the car.” There was a flash of movement out the door, and Clarke caught a glimpse of dark hair and beat up combat boots as a young girl clambered into the back of a beat up Jeep. 

 

“You’re not dead,” Clarke said in lieu of a greeting, one hand on her backpack and one hand on her gun. The last person had wanted her supplies, and the person before that had wanted that and more. Both had gotten a bullet in the head. It had been Clarke’s experience that they were better when they tried to eat you. 

 

“You’re not either,” the man responded, guarded. “We just want to get some supplies and then hit the road.” 

 

Clarke had opened her mouth to express her happiness with that sentiment when the guttural moan sounded behind her and the man’s brown eyes went wide. There was no reaction that Clarke remembered exactly, just the sound of a gunshot and the wet squelching sound of a decaying body hitting the ground behind her. New blood to add to the painting on her face, Clarke thought without a hint of emotion. Then, the scream sounded. 

 

They were both running outside at a full sprint, he because the girl was obviously someone he loved and Clarke because she’d gotten a glimpse of her face, absent of bloodstains and still chubby with youth. “Bellamy,” the girl was screaming, and somewhere in the back of her mind Clarke registered the name. 

 

There was a corpse pulling at the lapels of the girl’s coat as she hacked its arms with a dagger, and three more emerging from behind the gas station pumps. Clarke raised her gun and shot three of her precious bullets into each of them, letting Bellamy deal with the situation by the van. There was the familiar pang of guilt when each corpse went down, the little voice at the back of her mind that reminded her each of the bodies she’d just shot had once belonged to someone, had once curled their pinky around someone else in a promise or worked strands of hair into a braid with loving fingers. 

 

When Clarke turned around, fighting down the sick feeling in her stomach in record time, the girl was huddled against the door of the car with her knees up to her chin and wide eyes while the man, Bellamy, was cursing and trying to stop the flow of blood out of his thigh. 

 

“What happened?” Clarke asked into the wind. Bellamy looked up, as if startled to find that she was still there. 

 

“Octavia missed the Stiff,” he said, attempting to keep the thin strain of pain that wound its way through his voice. “You got all the others?” 

 

“Yeah.” Clarke dug through her bag, pulling the med kit from among everything else she refused to leave in her backseat. “I was in med school. You know, before. I can patch that up, if you want.”

 

“Uh- yeah, I guess that would be better than just wrapping it in an old T-shirt.” The girl, Octavia, was still staring at the corpse in front of her, eyes wide, breathing shallowly. Clarke watched as she closed her eyes and banged her head softly against the Jeep’s door, as if to remind herself of her existence. 

 

“Do you have a color preference?” Clarke asked, holding up the needle. He shook his head, eyes trained firmly on Octavia, on the beads of sweat that dripped off of her brow. “That’s good, cause I only have black.” 

 

Clarke gripped both sides of the tear in his jeans and pulled, exposing the steady gush of his wound. The antibacterial wipe removed almost as much dirt as it did blood, and by the time Clarke was done stitching, it seemed like he’d decided to trust her.

 

“So, Doc,” he said, snatching the needle out of her hands and using the excess thread to sew the rip in his jeans, “you have a name?” 

 

“Yours first,” Clarke answered carefully, packing up her supplies. Animals didn’t have names, and Clarke knew that once you gave up your name, your humanity was the next thing to go. She’d met more than one person who proved her theory right. Bellamy helped Octavia off the ground and whispered something into her ear, something that removed the glassy look from behind her eyes. 

 

“Bellamy,” he said, easy enough that Clarke managed to convince herself that if he’d wanted something from her he would’ve taken it already.

 

“I’m Clarke,” she answered, sticking out her hand. 

 

“You’re a good shot,” Octavia said suddenly as Bellamy reached his arm forward. “We’re headed west. Maybe as far as the coast. You?”

 

“Nowhere,” Clarke replied. “Just staying alive.” 

 

“You should come with us,” Octavia chirped, and Clarke watched as the innocence returned to her features, as it colonized the slope of her smile and the smooth curve of her brow. “We have plenty of room, and finding gas here for one car is going to be hard enough.” 

 

Clarke’s eyes met Bellamy’s and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod, and all at once she allowed herself to begin to hope for more than just survival. “Why not,” she said, wiping the blood off of her face with her sleeve. 

 

Octavia’s smile would have been infectious if Clarke hadn’t become exhausted from disease months ago. As it was, she felt like the layer of emotional detachment she’d draped over herself when the first bullet left her gun lift a little bit. _Oh_ , her heart seemed to say. _These are the kind of people you could love._

 

And then, her mind: _these are the kinds of people that could get you killed._

 

* * *

 

Finding gas didn’t prove to be largely difficult, as Octavia cheerfully told Clarke that they’d had a half tank anyways, and Bellamy had only stopped to see if the convenience store had any water bottles. It turned out that everything in the Jeep was either stuffed in empty water bottles or just full water bottles waiting to be consumed.

 

“It’s something to do with disease,” Octavia said with a dismissive wave of her hand. Clarke noticed, though, that when she ripped open the bag of gummy bears they’d found on the shelves of the gas station, Octavia stuck one in her mouth and poured the rest carefully into an old Deer Park bottle. 

 

Bellamy drove for days back the way Clarke came. He left the windows rolled down and he always had a CD in the radio, usually what sounded like Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits album. Octavia was either in the back, fast asleep, with her cheek pressed up against a stuffed bear, or drawing all over her hands with a sharpie. Bellamy never said anything, just kept his eyes on the road and his foot on the accelerator. Clarke’s gaze was fixed out the window, watching the fields blur past in streaks of yellow and green. 

 

The days turned to weeks faster than Clarke was used to. She could sleep without preparing to never wake up, and it seemed Bellamy trusted her enough to do the same. They didn’t talk much, not about anything important, but Clarke watched the way that Bellamy locked Octavia’s bear in the glove compartment when they looted rest stops, and the way that Octavia rolled her eyes when he insisted she store the Twizzlers they’d found go right into a sealed bottle. 

 

It slowly dawned on her that the reason life felt like it was moving faster was because she had things to look forward to. The way Bellamy’s hair would stick to the side of his head after a nap, and the shapes Octavia would assign to clouds, shapes nobody else could see. Sitting in the front seat, watching the road recede behind them, became the first place she’d felt safe in a long time. 

 

So when Clarke saw the broken down RV pulled over on the shoulder of the road, she shut off the music. 

 

“Pull over!” she shouted over the roar of the wind. Bellamy looked up, half startled, half pissed that she’d stopped in the middle of a song. 

 

“Why?” he yelled back, just as loud. Miraculously, Octavia remained asleep in the backseat.

 

“I came from this direction, remember? There’s a stream, and some blackberry bushes, and a safe spot to park the car!” Clarke jerked her head back towards the RV for emphasis, and Bellamy grudgingly pressed his foot down on the break. “We haven’t eaten anything but potato chips for days, we could stand a little gathering in the forest.” 

 

“It’s the end of the world, Doc. I don’t think it’s the cholesterol that’s gonna kill me,” he shot back. The smirk didn’t reach his eyes, but Clarke didn’t have to wonder why.

 

Octavia only woke up when the Jeep rolled to a stop. The bear had left imprints on her cheek, the marble of its eye a red dimple in her sudden smile. “What’d we stop for?” she asked, stretching her arms in the limited space of the backseat. “Does Bellamy need to hit something again?”

 

“Octavia,” Bellamy said sharply, turning the car off. “None of that right now.” 

 

The normal human interaction washed over Clarke and she took it in with an inexplicable sense of happiness. She had a feeling that even if it wasn’t the apocalypse, she’d still be falling in love with Octavia. With both of them. 

 

“If we’re not stopped for-“ Octavia stopped short at a glare from Bellamy and looked back to Clarke. “Why’d we stop?” 

 

“I was here for a couple of days,” Clarke said. She swallowed thinking about why, struggling to keep the knot in her stomach from becoming tears. “There’s a stream that’s good for swimming, and I don’t know about you, but I feel kind of grimy.” 

 

A grin split Octavia’s features as she tugged her shoes on. “I’m so gross,” she exclaimed, rummaging around in the back. When she reemerged, she was holding a bottle of Pantene triumphantly. “You have no idea how long I’ve been saving this.” 

 

Bellamy walked in front of Octavia with his gun raised the entire way to the stream, his head on a constant swivel. He stepped carefully over twigs and leaves, his feet padding through the forest almost silently. Every time Octavia snapped a branch under her feet his shoulders tensed and he snapped his gaze back to both of them. He nodded gravely at Clarke, and she returned the gesture before going back to scanning the trees. One thing she’d learned the hard way was that if you looked too hard for something, you’d always find it. Even if it was just a shadow or a rustle in the branches, a long glance could turn it into a Stiff. And that was just as dangerous as the real thing. 

 

Octavia perked up when she heard the bubbling of the river, and she almost overtook Bellamy trying to jump in. He wrapped his arms around her waist and set her down on a rock by the bank. “Stay here. I gotta check both sides before I let you anywhere near the water.” 

 

“I’ll take this side,” Clarke said, starting to walk along the bank. “But I doubt we’ll see anything. This is high ground, and they usually don’t go uphill if they can help it.” 

 

Bellamy glowered. “I’m not taking any chances.” 

 

Much later, when Bellamy had scrutinized both sides of the river to his satisfaction, Octavia dove into the water with a splash, beckoning Clarke in behind her. Octavia floated alone, allowing herself to be swept away by the current as Clarke worked out the tangles in each individual strand of her hair. She climbed out when she was done, skin pink and cleaner than she’d felt in what seemed like years. 

 

She picked her way over to a rock with a good vantage point over the surrounding forest, dropping her pocket knife beside her and leaning her head back against the warm surface of the rock. As she spread her hair out to dry in the sun, she hummed softly, a tune from bathtime with her dad. She closed her eyes to get a better picture of his face, allowing herself to indulge in the past since the first time rotted gore had created new freckles across her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, he was sitting right beside her. 

 

“Hey,” Clarke said. They could both hear Octavia splashing around in the water, diving down to touch the bottom and resurfacing with a gasp for air. “What’s up?” 

 

Bellamy drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “How did you do this so quickly?” he asked, and it was like an accusation. 

 

“Do what?” 

 

“All this.” Bellamy gestured his arms around in a circle and Clarke followed them with her eyes, taking in the forest and the river and the clouds. “I can’t even make her smile most days.” 

 

The gold bits of Clarke’s hair glinted with sunlight as she squinted up at him. “All I did was show you where the path was. You’re the one who kept her safe long enough to get here.” 

 

“It’s not enough anymore,” Bellamy said, and Clarke could see the pain in his eyes even in the blinding afternoon. “Keeping her alive. She’s not happy, she’s just scared. All the time.” 

 

Bellamy took a deep breath, his chest shuddering with the weight of his confession. “I’m just as scared, and I can’t- I can’t make it easier because I don’t have any answers. I don’t know where I’m going, and I don’t know why this is happening to us. I thought I knew that where we are now is better than being a drooling corpse, but at this point I’m not so sure.” 

 

Clarke propped herself up on her elbows, shook her hair out of her eyes. “Do you know how I found this place?” Bellamy shook his head and Clarke smiled grimly. “I was dating this girl, before everything fell to shit. We’d just started going out, you know, and she was big into nature, and being a vegan, and living close to the earth or whatever. So she took me camping for a week. We didn’t really leave the tent much, and we were way up in the mountains with no cell reception.”

 

“When we drove back home, there were corpses in the street. None of them were moving, cause they’d all had their brains smashed in by cars, or baseball bats, or this one girl that had a barbecue fork shoved through her skull. My living room carpet was covered in blood, my friends were gone, and she didn’t have any family in the area. We’d been dating for a month, and the sex was great, but God- I didn’t know her at all. In the end, though, she was all I had left, so we figured we’d go to the nearest military base. They said it was safe on the radio, and we believed them.” 

 

Clarke felt her voice catch in her throat, saw Bellamy look away a moment as she prepared herself for what came next. “You know what we saw. And Lexa took one look at it and she was done, she was never the same. I didn’t know her for very long, but I know that she trusted the fact that people were inherently good in their souls, and what was left of them… People were at their worst. They were scared, and they were angry, and there was nothing good about what they did.”

 

“So we found this place. And we set up a tent, and we wiped the blood off of our faces in the stream, and we went to sleep. I woke up to the sound of a gunshot, and that was it.” Clarke let the tears slide down her face without any acknowledgement, and then she allowed a small smile. “What I’m trying to say is that once you stop living and start surviving, you’ll know. I remember Lexa, and she’s sad and angry and vengeful. That’s what this world turned her into. But you, and Octavia… you smile. You sing along to shitty music. You eat gummy worms out of water bottles and sleep with teddy bears. You’re doing more than just surviving.” 

 

Bellamy reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Clarke’s ear. “I’m sorry.” 

 

“I barely knew her,” Clarke said, the tears flowing more freely now. “All the people I really knew are gone.” 

 

“You know me.” Bellamy smiled, and it was radiant, a sight Clarke had never seen before. Suddenly the sun didn’t look so bright in the afternoon air. 

 

“I know you’re grumpy and that you don’t like to offer rides to people, and that you like to sing along to Piano Man under your breath.” Clarke hiccuped. “You keep everything else shrouded in mystery.” 

 

“I was in college, studying classics. I’ve been in charge of Octavia her whole life. I liked Rory and Jess more than Rory and Dean. I’m scared as hell, and I picked you up off the street because you don’t know where you’re going either. And because O asked.” Bellamy’s hand hadn’t left Clarke’s face, and she could feel the pulse in his thumb beating against her cheek. _He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive_ , it whispered, as though by saying it over and over it would always be true. 

 

In between the thuds of his pulse, Clarke could feel her heart swelling. _You’re fucked_ , a voice in her head told her, and she had almost gotten up the courage to tell it to go screw itself when Octavia clambered, soaking, up onto the rock. 

 

“I found a car key!” she shouted, holding the rusted metal above her head. 

 

Bellamy laughed, pulled his hand away. “What you found is tetanus. Put that down before it kills you.” 

* * *

 

Bellamy yanked the strands of Octavia’s hair away from her face to muffled protest, winding them together on the back of her head. “Look, if you don’t stop whining I’m going to have to redo it,” he warned. 

 

“I asked you to braid my hair, not mutilate me,” Octavia growled in response. Bellamy tugged harder. “I swear to God, if you don’t-“ 

 

Clarke tossed the last twig in the fire and Octavia’s threat was drowned out by the crackling of the flame. It felt strange, to go to sleep in the same place she’d woken up, but it was getting easier. She knew the sky she’d be waking up to, knew where she could go to brush her teeth. She knew that there would be people nearby to make her life worth living. Eventually, she stopped jumping at every little noise. _This is the beginning of the end_ , her mind whispered. _You’ve fallen in love, and now you’ll die._

 

It was funny, the way she feebly protested. The first thing she denied was the fact that she was in love. Death was easy, compared to him. 

 

“Done,” Bellamy pronounced, knotting the bottom of the braid where it rested on Octavia’s back. She jumped up with a quick mumble of discontent and Bellamy gestured to the spot in front of him. “I can do yours, if you want.”

 

Clarke made her way over to him wordlessly, sat down and allowed him to run his hands through her hair. Octavia scampered into the woods, off to dance in the trees and collect blackberries, the very picture of the teenage wanderlust Bellamy never thought she’d get to experience.

 

His hands moved quickly, and when he was done braiding Clarke didn’t move. She let herself lean back into his chest, let her head drop back onto his shoulder. “I think we need to go,” she said softly. 

 

She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was confused. She knew the way his eyebrows would pull together, and the the exact slope of his frown. “I don’t understand,” he said into her hair. “We just started being okay.” 

 

“I’m not ready,” Clarke admitted. 

 

“What do you mean?” 

 

“Being okay… I don’t want to give up on the whole world. There’s people out there, people like you and me, driving from gas station to gas station without caring whether they live or die. I’m not ready to let them go.” Clarke turned, finally, to look Bellamy in the eye. “You saved me. But there are others.” 

 

Bellamy breathed deeply; Clarke could feel his chest rise and fall as it curved around her spine. “Can we give up on part of it? You know, just focus on small parts of America first-“ 

 

Clarke laughed suddenly, bright and clear. She shoved him away and pretended to be annoyed. “Shut up, asshole.” 

 

“You like it,” he said, his eyebrows raised suggestively. 

 

_I love you_ , her mind screamed wildly. _I love you, I love you, we’re going to die_. 

 

They packed up the car the next morning, Octavia carving into tree trunks with her knife and scuffing her feet in the grass. When they finally pulled back out onto the highway, she was sitting sullenly in the backseat. Clarke thought suddenly of watching Disney Channel Movies on Sunday nights, of watching kids move away from their hometowns and rage against their parents. There was a rush of sick gratitude that Octavia didn’t miss out on the tradition of hating authority figures.

 

Bellamy had explained it to her, the night before. About how helping people was important, especially in this kind of world. Their voices had turned to shouts quickly in the conversation, and Clarke had slipped into the woods to give them a bit of privacy. Not before she caught Octavia asking Bellamy why, if he was so keen on helping humanity, he’d let all those people in the school die. 

 

Clarke didn’t want to know. 

 

Or, she thought she didn’t, until they’d been driving for three days and Octavia still hadn’t uttered a word. Bellamy was sulking in the passenger’s seat, and neither of them were sleeping. Their necks were lolling back in obviously faked attempts to look like they could sleep in the deafening silence that presided over the Jeep, and Clarke finally reached out and punched Bellamy’s shoulder with all the strength she could muster. 

 

“Fuck!” he cried out, his eyes opening in confirmation of his fake nap. “What do you want?” 

 

“Talk to me,” Clarke said simply, without looking away from the road. “And I don’t mean about what CD we’re going to put on next. Talk to me about something important. Something about you I don’t already know.” 

 

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” Bellamy said cautiously. “Like, that I always used to put relish on my hot dogs instead of ketchup?” 

 

“While that’s very enlightening, I meant more, like, how did your life end up like this? You know how I made it to the gas station, now it’s your turn.” 

 

Bellamy’s entire body stiffened. “There’s nothing to tell.” 

 

“It’s the end of days,” Clarke scoffed, “there’s no way you have no story behind how you got here.” 

 

“There were dead people roaming the streets, so I grabbed my sister and ran. End of story.” Bellamy slammed a CD into the car’s radio and cranked the volume, drowning out all the protests Clarke knew better than to utter. Clarke drove the rest of her shift listening to a breakup mixtape comprised of mostly Adele’s 19 and some oddly placed Alanis Morissette. 

 

It took two days until the two of them were back in the same configuration, Clarke driving on another long stretch of quiet highway with Bellamy in the front seat, steering carefully around abandoned cars while he pretended to sleep. This time, he gave up the act before Clarke could punch him.

 

“What do you want this time?” He pretended to be groggy, rubbing his eyes, and for some reason it was starting to make Clarke mad. 

 

“The same thing I wanted last time. The truth.” 

 

“I told you. Stiffs. Danger. Flight. That was my three step plan.” 

 

Clarke could feel the pitch of her voice going up, betraying the calm she was trying so hard to maintain. “I told you everything I saw on my way to you-“

 

And then, Bellamy turned it into a bloodbath, letting all the words he’d been holding in for a week of tense silence pour out. “I didn’t ask you to tell me your fucking life story, okay? I never asked for you to put that shit on me. And you were so eager to tell it, weren’t you, because it made you seem like such a fucking angel. A girl who arrives back at home to find all her friends dead, who escapes into the mountains and doesn’t have to kill a soul, whose only real dealings with death is the bullet her girlfriend used to kill herself! We didn’t all get so lucky, okay? We didn’t all get to be spared from the shit that went down the first couple of weeks, so stop acting like we’re going to cry together over our mutual goddamn heartbreak and just drive the fucking car.” 

 

Bellamy stopped, finally, breathing hard. Octavia was sitting up in the backseat with her eyes wide, hands clutching at her teddy bear involuntarily, but neither Clarke nor Bellamy noticed. 

 

“I told you about what happened to me because you asked me whether life was worth living anymore,” Clarke spat out, face red. “And the only reason I could answer was because all the time I spent driving around, stopping at gas stations and killing everything that moved because even to people who are alive I’m only a piece of meat. The pretty blonde girl, all alone, I know what you think of me! But the world ended for everyone, Bellamy. And I didn’t have _anyone_. You say I didn’t see what you saw, but I would kill to have been at home when all of this started. I _have_ killed for it.” Clarke wanted to be angry, she was trying so hard, but the tears kept streaming down her face. “I didn’t even have a chance to save them.” 

 

The tears got too hot and too fast, so Clarke stepped on the brake and yanked her seatbelt off so she could curl up behind the wheel. Instead, Bellamy reached out and tugged her over to the passenger’s seat, until she was half sitting in his lap with her face mashed in his shirt. The flannel rubbed at Clarke’s nose, and she left streaks of snot on the pattern when her breath started to come in puffs. 

 

Bellamy started stroking Clarke’s hair as all the anger drifted out the cracked window. “I did some really horrible things,” he whispered into the top of her head, “but I got Octavia out. And I’m sorry that you couldn’t do that for your people.” 

 

Clarke grabbed a fistful of the damp flannel in front of her. “You’re my people,” she said in between hiccups. Clarke felt something scratch her cheek, and when she looked up there was raggedy brown fur in her face, tickling around her chin. 

 

“I know I’m too old for teddy bears,” Octavia said softly, “but Gus is a good listener.” 

 

Bellamy grabbed onto his sister’s hand and held it, his arm stretched awkwardly over the back of his seat. “They gathered us all in the school once it got really bad,” he started. “And nobody knew how to handle it. We lived in a pretty small town, so everyone knew each other, and we thought we’d be safe. But we ran out of food pretty fast with everyone jammed in there, and someone got killed over a can of corn.”

 

“We didn’t know that the bites didn’t have anything to do with it. That it was just death. So we put him in the gym under a sheet, and that night he killed enough people to turn the whole building into a walking nightmare. I can’t- I won’t talk about that night. But the only way we could get out was by drenching everything we could in gasoline and setting the whole place on fire. And when I locked the door behind me, there were still people inside, people who weren’t Stiffs. I could- I can hear them screaming.” 

 

“I’m glad it was you,” Clarke said, her voice as small as she felt. “And not anyone else.” 

 

Octavia’s fingers had gone white knuckled on Bellamy’s, and they stayed that way. “I am too.” 

 

Bellamy’s face betrayed the barest hint of a smile. 

 

* * *

 

The next time they stopped it was because they’d found an old motel and Bellamy hadn’t been sleeping. 

 

“Just let us stop for one night,” Clarke pleaded, “so you can lie down on a surface that’s actually flat and maybe stop being such an asshole.” 

 

Octavia, from her perch in the passenger’s seat, ejected the CD and crossed her arms. “She’s right. You’re being an asshole. And even if she wasn’t right, I still want to sleep in a real bed at a creepy motel with a floor that doesn’t hit potholes every ten seconds.” 

 

The scowl that crossed Bellamy’s face would have been funny if Clarke hadn’t been too busy gearing up for a fight. “We’re not stopping.”

 

“Why not?” Clarke asked, exasperated. “Is it because the highway won’t be here tomorrow morning? Or because if we don’t keep driving, we’re going to be late for brunch? We have nowhere to be, Bellamy. Our only job is to stay healthy, and to stay sane, and we both need sleep.” 

 

“Fine,” Bellamy conceded, reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out Clarke’s gun. “We make sure it’s safe, and we spend one night. That’s it.” 

 

Octavia reached into her shoe and pulled out a switchblade before opening the car door. “I want my own room,” she said, sticking her nose in the air and stomping off towards the nearest door without checking to see if anyone was following her. “And you two can finally have yours,” she tossed over her shoulder. 

 

Color rose in Clarke’s cheeks as Bellamy followed his sister, his gun held up in front of him. She swallowed, pushing down whatever it was Octavia had brought up, inspected her gun and switched off the safety. Her mind went back to the rock by the river, back to his hand on her cheek, back to the way she couldn’t look at him without thinking that he could be killed at any minute. That if he died, she would have to be dead too, because there was no way in hell she wouldn’t be in front of the bullet unless she had already gotten hit. 

 

_You’ve killed to stay alive, and you’d throw it all away_ , Clarke’s mind jeered as she inspected the parking lot for Stiffs. _You murdered, and for what?_

 

“The rooms are clear,” Bellamy called, reaching out his hand. 

 

_For him._

 

* * *

 

He wouldn’t entertain the idea of sleeping unless they were in connected rooms, and Octavia wouldn’t hear of sharing a bed, so the evening began with Clarke curled up awkwardly on her side, trying to take up as little room as possible. Bellamy had gotten up a combined six times in ten minutes, to steal batteries from the remote, or check to make sure the curtains were still fully closed. 

 

“Please stop moving,” Clarke said, giving herself license to protest after Bellamy got up to prepare his shoes in case of an emergency. “I’d really like to sleep.”

 

“I can’t.” Bellamy continued fiddling with his laces. “I can’t sleep, and it’s not the seats in the Jeep or the constant movement.”

 

Clarke sat up and unfurled her legs. “If you won’t sleep can you at least lie down?”

 

“This isn’t a choice!” Bellamy burst out. When he saw Clarke shrink back against her pillow he put his head in his hands. “None of this is a choice.”

 

“C’mere,” Clarke said, half gentle and half command. When Bellamy flopped next to her on the bed, she lay back and fit her head into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, letting his jawline nestle in her hair. “I haven’t been sleeping too much either. But we’re here, so we might as well give it the old college try.” 

 

Bellamy chuckled, and Clarke could feel it rumble out of his chest. He turned his head slightly, brushed his lips over the top of her head. Clarke shivered. “I used to be good at this,” he said. “This, having a girl in my bed. I was a pro.”

 

“Hmm,” Clarke murmured in response. “I was great at having girls in my bed. I was always bad at getting them to stay for breakfast, though, which for some reason was always a big turn on-“ 

 

Clarke let the sound die in her throat as Bellamy pressed his lips to hers, soft, like he was trying not to break her. “I can’t sleep,” he said after he pulled back, “and I don’t want to sleep. And I promise I’ll stay for breakfast.” 

 

It hit her hard and fast, the realization that she was never going to be okay after this. That the state of being that had kept her alive, the apathy that she’d worn like armor, had been dismantled by him piece by piece and then destroyed by this one split second kiss. And then, right after the instant it took for Clarke to figure that out, she was tugging his lips back down to hers, running her teeth over his bottom lip, relishing the growl that emerged from the back of his throat. 

 

“Tell me something good,” Bellamy said before he moved his mouth to Clarke’s neck. “Tell me about home.” She told him about her Dad’s house in San Juan, about the spot of sun on her bedroom floor and the winding staircase and the feeling she got when she went back, while he made her voice hitch just by slipping his hands into her jeans. Clarke tugged him back up to eye level when her hips started to buck underneath his fingers, and she held his chin in her hand. 

 

“It’s you now,” she said, and what once had been tentative was now desperate, needy. Clarke snuck her fingers under his shirt, tugging at his neckline until he pulled it over his head and wriggled out of the sleeves. His chest radiated heat, and Clarke couldn’t keep herself from digging her fingernails into his shoulder blades, just to bring some feeling back into her hands.

 

He stopped, looked up at her, a question in his eyes, and Clarke waited for the voice inside her head to protest, to tell her that this wouldn’t make her happy, that it would just kill her like everything else about him. The voice stayed silent. Clarke nodded. 

 

* * *

 

Bellamy fell asleep curled around Clarke like a cat, his curls mashed against her pillow and his fingers wound in her hair. He didn’t wake up until Octavia knocked on the door that connected their rooms, yelling something about rain and more sleep. Clarke watched his eyelids flutter, watched him look at her for a moment with nothing but bleary happiness. Then she watched him feel what she felt every morning, watched the remembrance of their world settle around him like a heavy blanket. 

 

“You know what’s weird?” he asked, propping himself up on one elbow. “The world ended six months ago.”

 

“Six months exactly, or are you guessing?” Clarke thought back to her camping trip, how it had been a nice California October and the air was crisp with what she thought was new beginnings. 

 

“Yeah, I’ve been counting. I turn 25 today.”

 

Clarke smiled and rolled into his side. “Happy birthday. Sorry I didn’t get you anything, it looks like all the stores are closed, and for some reason my Amazon order never showed up.” 

 

Bellamy coughed, looked embarrassed. “I know what you can get me.” 

 

“You want a Porsche. No! You want an RV with some actual beds so-“

 

“I want you to be _in_.” He reached for the back of his neck and rubbed it in the way that meant he was one step from freaking out. “I don’t mean- We have this, and we have Octavia, and we have this shitty hand we’ve been dealt, and I need you to not ever trade us in for something less shitty.”

 

Clarke laughed breathlessly and the quick flash of hurt that made its way across Bellamy’s eyes made her heart break a little. “I’ve been in since I realized you couldn’t even sew yourself up, Blake. Try not to insult me in my own stolen motel room.” 

 

The tension breaking in the room was audible. “I want the Porsche too.” 

 

“Keep dreaming.” 

 

They left the motel later that day, after Octavia had deemed the rainfall soft enough to drive through. She spent the drive grinning in the back of the Jeep. The self-congratulatory smirk was common enough on Octavia’s face that Bellamy didn’t get up in arms about it. Clarke watched them lock eyes in the rearview mirror, felt her throat constrict as Octavia’s grin widened and the corners of Bellamy’s lips twitched. 

 

_This is your fault,_ the voice inside her head whispered. _You love him, and now you're going to kill him_. 

 

* * *

 

They headed west, mostly because Octavia said she wanted to see the ocean and the western highways were the ones Clarke could navigate enough to get them there. The drive through the desert that used to make Clarke antsy with its long stretches of absolutely abandoned scenery made Bellamy so relaxed in its flat visibility and emptiness that Clarke demanded they pull over and have a picnic.

 

“This is _so_ not the ocean,” Octavia grumbled as she pulled out her water bottle of gummi bears. Bellamy snatched it, citing his protein first rule and handing her a can of baked beans. “You disgust me,” Octavia said, pulling out her knife and stabbing the lid.

 

It wasn’t the family portrait Clarke had ever thought she’d cherish, the three of them sitting on desert sand with nothing to protect them from the searing heat, eating cold beans and spicy pineapple salsa and using deadly weapons as utensils. They were high off the grocery store they’d just looted, Octavia standing on the cart as it flew out into the parking lot filled with whatever nonperishables they had left while Clarke laughed on and Bellamy honked the horn in disapproval. He’d made them take boxes of uncooked spaghetti, saying it was like chips if you didn’t think too hard. 

 

“We could always just cook it, too,” Octavia had said with a roll of her eyes, stacking their trash next to the bin. When Clarke gave her a look, she shrugged absentmindedly. “I don’t want them to fix the zombie epidemic only to find we fucked up the environment.” 

 

And then the voice made its usual appearance with the sudden drop of Clarke’s stomach into her feet, hissing _she won’t be alive to see the climate go to shit, you already killed her_. Clarke swallowed the words and offered up a small smile instead, noting that at least now the resources were safe. “I don’t think the Stiffs are going to be overharvesting fish populations,” she managed to get out.

 

“I sometimes forget you have a diploma,” Bellamy said, chuckling. 

 

“Oh yes,” Octavia said gleefully, “the glorious piece of paper that’s now as good as kindling! If only Mrs. MacNamara could call me lazy and tell me to apply myself now.”

 

Bellamy flicked a bean at Octavia, and the sun cast golden rays over the three of them, and everything was perfect and Clarke was so happy she was unable to move even when Bellamy said it was time to get back in the Jeep. 

 

That was all well and good, because the car wouldn’t start after miles and miles of abuse. Bellamy swore and lifted the hood and Octavia managed to get a fire going to keep away the chill. Clarke warmed her hands and thought if she had just one more day like this, she could die happy.

 

But the desert killed them before that. Nighttime, and the fire, and Octavia’s laughter (which still carried the last vestiges of innocence) managed to carry over miles and bring Stiffs in droves. Clarke spotted them first, in the distant haze of kicked up sand. 

 

“Bellamy,” she said, her voice unnaturally high. “Look.” 

 

“Fuck,” he said softly, his hands greasy from their time inside the engine. 

 

Octavia narrowed her eyes and switched the safety on her gun. “I’m ready for a fight.”

 

“There’s too many of them, O,” Bellamy said, yanking the door of the Jeep open only to hear the engine turn over again and again. “We don’t have enough bullets even if we did have the time to aim.”

 

Clarke was silent.

 

“Three bullets?” Octavia asked Bellamy, and the only way to tell she was afraid was the barest of tremors in her voices. 

 

Bellamy closed his eyes. “We could still have options, O. We have time, we can—“

 

“You promised,” Octavia said, voice grave. “You fucking promised.” 

 

“What is that, what is three bullets?” Clarke forced out, her eyes stuck on the horizon. The sun was setting, and the group of former people were backlit by washes of orange and pink. 

 

“It was two bullets, and then this idiot had to go and fall in love with you,” Octavia said, looking for the twitch of a smile from either Bellamy or Clarke. When she was awarded with neither, she continued. “After we left our hometown, I was- you know what it’s like. So Bell said he’d keep two bullets in his pocket so if we saw our deaths coming we’d make sure we never end up like that. Like them.” Octavia’s eyes flicked to the Stiffs, who were growing closer at an alarming rate. “And this fucking wasteland gave us the perfect opportunity.” 

 

“It was the perfect spot for a picnic,” Bellamy said ruefully, and to Clarke’s surprise she laughed. 

 

“I wanted to go to the beach,” Octavia said, the relief palpable in her voice that if she couldn’t get a smile out of Clarke, someone could. “But no, we had to stop here.” 

 

Bellamy reached into his pocket. “Are we doing goodbyes?” 

 

Octavia grinned. “Unnecessary. I’m pretty sure I’ll see you both in hell, or in my next life, whichever comes first.” 

 

“Clarke?” Bellamy asked. 

 

Clarke was surprised to find her eyes dry and her hands steady. “I’m ready.” 

 

“I really wish the CD player worked,” Bellamy said after a beat of silence. “I always said I wanted to die listening to the harmonic solo in Piano Man.” 

 

Octavia snorted and Clarke said incredulously, “out of all the great lyrics in that song you pick the weird harmonic part?” 

 

Bellamy smiled and mussed Octavia’s hair. It seemed funny and somewhat incredible to Clarke that even facing death couldn’t keep Octavia from rolling her eyes at displays of affection. 

 

“We probably have two minutes until they’re here,” Octavia said, curling her fingers around the bullet Bellamy placed in her palm. “I love you guys. Or whatever.” 

 

“Or whatever,” Bellamy repeated, his grin still radiant in the cool air. He leaned against the Jeep and started humming.

 

Clarke’s heart thumped wildly, as though it knew that this was its last shot. _Oh,_ it said. _These are the kind of people that you love._ She waited for her mind to chime in.

 

It never did. 

**Author's Note:**

> this took me over a year to write. i've been so busy and so tired and i applied to so many colleges and as i have now enrolled in one i can finally get over the crippling fear i have developed and call this piece done.
> 
> it's not perfect. it's so far from perfect. but i'm proud of it, and i hope you like it, and i'm just ready to get it off my desktop to make room for other stuff. so pls tell me if you liked it, or if you didn't, and come find me on tumblr (emullz or officialbellarketrash) if you want to chat. 
> 
> thanks for reading!! u are sunshine


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